{"id":18521,"date":"2023-07-28T09:58:41","date_gmt":"2023-07-28T13:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=18521"},"modified":"2023-07-28T11:48:14","modified_gmt":"2023-07-28T15:48:14","slug":"the-iraq-war-was-a-systematic-atrocity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/28\/the-iraq-war-was-a-systematic-atrocity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Iraq War Was a Systematic Atrocity"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"pb-3\">\n<pre><a href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Screenshot-2023-07-28-at-11-37-42-James-Bovard-on-Twitter.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-18524 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Screenshot-2023-07-28-at-11-37-42-James-Bovard-on-Twitter.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"734\" height=\"196\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Screenshot-2023-07-28-at-11-37-42-James-Bovard-on-Twitter.png 734w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Screenshot-2023-07-28-at-11-37-42-James-Bovard-on-Twitter-150x40.png 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 734px) 100vw, 734px\" \/><\/a><\/pre>\n<h1 class=\"entry-title h2\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fff.org\/explore-freedom\/article\/the-iraq-war-was-a-systematic-atrocity\/\">The Iraq War Was a Systematic Atrocity<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/ffflogo.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6071\" src=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/ffflogo.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"97\" \/><\/a><\/h1>\n<p>by James Bovard<\/p>\n<\/header>\n<p>Media coverage of the twentieth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War mostly portrayed the war as a blunder. There were systematic war crimes that have largely vanished into the memory hole, but permitting government officials to vaporize their victims paves the way to new atrocities.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"content-tweet-block noprint\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=It%20is%20folly%20to%20pay%20more%20attention%20to%20Pentagon%20denials%20than%20to%20piles%20of%20corpses%20and%20flattened%20villages.&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fff.org%2Fexplore-freedom%2Farticle%2Fthe-iraq-war-was-a-systematic-atrocity%2F&amp;via=FutureofFreedom\"><span class=\"tweet-box-text\">It is folly to pay more attention to Pentagon denials than to piles of corpses and flattened villages.<\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"tweet-box-link\">[Click to Tweet]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, former First Lady Barbara Bush announced: \u201cWhy should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it\u2019s gonna happen? It\u2019s not relevant, so why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Pentagon quickly institutionalized the Barbara Bush rule.<\/strong> Early in the Iraq war, Brig. Gen. Vince Brooks, asked about tracking civilian casualties, replied, \u201cIt just is not worth trying to characterize by numbers. And, frankly, if we are going to be honorable about our warfare, we are not out there trying to count up bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Congress, in 2003 legislation funding the Iraq War, required the Pentagon to \u201cseek to identify families of non-combatant Iraqis who were killed or injured or whose homes were damaged during recent military operations, and to provide appropriate assistance.\u201d The Pentagon ignored the provision. The <i>Washington Post<\/i> reported: \u201cOne Air Force general, asked why the military has not done such postwar accounting in the past, said it has been more cost-effective to pour resources into increasingly sophisticated weaponry and intelligence-gathering equipment.\u201d Acquiring more lethal weapons trumped tallying the victims.<\/p>\n<h2><b>The media blackout on the death count begins<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><strong>After the invasion progressed, Bush perennially proclaimed that the United States had given freedom to 25 million Iraqis. Thus, any Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. forces were both statistically and morally inconsequential.<\/strong> And the vast majority of the news coverage left out the asterisks.<\/p>\n<p>A 2005 American University survey of hundreds of journalists who covered Iraq concluded:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Many media outlets have self-censored their reporting on the conflict in Iraq because of concern about public reaction to graphic images and details about the war.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Individual journalists commented:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cIn general, coverage downplayed civilian casualties and promoted a pro-U.S. viewpoint. No U.S. media show abuses by U.S. military carried out on regular basis.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cFriendly fire incidents were to show only injured Americans, and no reference made to possible mistakes involving civilians.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe real damage of the war on the civilian population was uniformly omitted.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The media almost always refused to publish photos incriminating the U.S. military. The <i>Washington Post<\/i> received a leak of thousands of pages of confidential records on the 2005 massacre by U.S. Marines at Haditha, including stunning photos taken immediately after the killings of 24 civilians (mostly women and children). Though the <i>Post<\/i> headlined its exclusive story, \u201cMarines\u2019 Photos Provide Graphic Evidence in Haditha Probe,\u201d the reporter noted halfway through the article that \u201c<i>Post<\/i> editors decided that most of the images are too graphic to publish.\u201d The <i>Post<\/i> suppressed the evidence at the same time it continued deferentially reporting official denials that U.S. troops committed atrocities.<\/p>\n<p>In 2006, the U.S. military imposed new restrictions on the media, decreeing that \u201cNames, video, identifiable written\/oral descriptions or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without service member\u2019s prior written consent.\u201d This effectively guaranteed that Americans would never see photos or film footage of the vast majority of American casualties. (Dead men sign no consent forms.) The news media did not publicly disclose or challenge the restrictions.<\/p>\n<p>In 2007, two Apache helicopters targeted a group of men in Baghdad with 30 mm. cannons and killed up to 18 people. Video from the helicopter revealed one helicopter crew \u201claughing at some of the casualties, all of whom were civilians, including two <i>Reuters<\/i> journalists.\u201d \u201cLight \u2018em all up. Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,\u201d one guy on the recording declared. Army Corporal Chelsea Manning leaked the video to Wikileaks, which disclosed it in 2010.<\/p>\n<p>Wikileaks declared on Twitter: \u201c<i>Washington Post<\/i> had Collateral Murder video for over a year but DID NOT RELEASE IT to the public.\u201d Wikileaks also disclosed thousands of official documents exposing U.S. war crimes and abuses, tacitly damning American media outlets that chose to ignore or shroud atrocities.<\/p>\n<p>A mid-2008 <i>New York Times <\/i>article noted that \u201cAfter five years and more than 4,000 U.S. combat deaths, searches and interviews turned up fewer than a half-dozen graphic photographs of dead U.S. soldiers.\u201d Veteran photographers who posted shots of wounded or dead U.S. soldiers were quickly booted out of Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>The <i>Times<\/i> noted that Iraqi \u201cdetainees were widely photographed in the early years of the war, but the U.S. Defense Department, citing prisoners\u2019 rights, has recently stopped that practice as well.\u201d Privacy was the only \u201cright\u201d the Pentagon pretended to respect \u2014 since the vast majority of detainees received little or no due process.<\/p>\n<h2><b>The collateral damage of innocent dead civilians<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><strong>As the number of Iraqi civilians killed by American forces rose, the U.S. military increasingly relied on boilerplate self-exonerations.<\/strong> In September 2007, after U.S. bombings killed enough women and children to produce a blip on the media radar, U.S. military spokesman Major Brad Leighton announced: \u201cWe regret when civilians are hurt or killed while coalition forces search to rid Iraq of terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The vast majority of the American media recited whatever the Pentagon emitted in the first years of the Iraq war. This was exemplified in the coverage of the two U.S. assaults on Fallujah in 2004. The first attack was launched in April 2004 in retaliation for the killings of four contractors for Blackwater, a company that became renowned for killing innocent Iraqis.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bush<\/strong> reportedly gave the order: \u201cI want heads to roll.\u201d He told Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez during a video conference:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them!<\/strong> We must be tougher than hell!\u2026 Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>U.S. forces quickly placed the entire city under siege. The British <i>Guardian<\/i> reported:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The US soldiers were going around telling people to leave by dusk or they would be killed, but then when people fled with whatever they could carry, they were stopped at the U.S. military checkpoint on the edge of town and not let out, trapped, watching the sun go down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The city was blasted by artillery barrages, F\u201316 jets, and AC\u2013130 Spectre planes, which pumped 4,000 rounds a minute into selected targets. Adam Kokesh, who fought in Fallujah as a Marine Corps sergeant, later commented:<\/p>\n<p>During the siege of Fallujah, we changed rules of engagement more often than we changed our underwear. At one point, we imposed a curfew on the city, and were told to fire at anything that moved in the dark.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rather than change the rules of engagement to limit civilian carnage, the Bush administration demonized media outlets that showed U.S. victims.<\/strong> On April 16, a few days after Kimmitt\u2019s comment, Bush met British Prime Minister Tony Blair and proposed bombing Al Jazeera\u2019s headquarters in Doha, Qatar (a staunch U.S. ally). Blair talked Bush out of attacking the television network offices. A British government official leaked the minutes of a meeting, creating a brief hubbub that was largely ignored within the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Bush had previously talked to Blair in 2003 about attacking the Al Jazeera television transmitter in Baghdad. A few days\/weeks later, the U.S. military killed one Al Jazeera journalist when it attacked the network\u2019s headquarters in Baghdad, and several Al Jazeera employees were seized and detained for long periods of time.<\/p>\n<p>The Bush administration decided to crush the city \u2014 but not until after Bush was safely reelected. Up to 50,000 civilians remained in Falluja at the time of the second U.S. assault. At a November 8, 2004, press conference, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared that \u201cInnocent civilians in that city have all the guidance they need as to how they can avoid getting into trouble.\u201d Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Myers said three days later that Fallujah \u201clooks like a ghost town [because] the Iraqi government gave instructions to the citizens of Fallujah to stay indoors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Supposedly, Iraqi civilians would be safe even if when American troops went house to house \u201cclearing\u201d insurgents out. However, three years later, during the trials for the killings elsewhere in Iraq, Marines continually invoked the Fallujah Rules of Engagement to justify their actions. Marine Corporal Justin Sharratt, who was indicted for murdering three civilians in Haditha (the charges were later dropped), explained in a 2007 interview with PBS:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For the push of Fallujah, there [were no civilians]. We were told before we went in that if it moved, it dies\u2026. About a month before we went into the city of Fallujah, we sent out flyers\u2026. We let the population know that we were coming in on this date, and if you were left in the city, you were going to die.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The interviewer asked: \u201cWas the procedure for clearing a house in Fallujah different from other house clearing in Iraq?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sharratt replied: \u201cYes. The difference between clearing houses in Fallujah was that the entire city was deemed hostile. So every house we went into, we prepped with frags and we went in shooting.\u201d Thus, the Marines were preemptively justified in killing everyone inside \u2014 no questions asked. Former congressman Duncan Hunter admitted in 2019, \u201cI was an artillery officer, and we fired hundreds of rounds into Fallujah, killed probably hundreds of civilians \u2026 probably killed women and children.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. attack left much of Fallujah looking like a lunar landscape, with near-total destruction as far as the eye could see. Yet, regardless of how many rows of houses the United States flattened in the city, accusations that the United States killed noncombatants were false by definition. Because the U.S. government refused to count civilian casualties, they did not exist. And anyone who claimed to count them was slandering the United States and aiding the terrorists.<\/p>\n<h2><b>Commas, not corpses<\/b><\/h2>\n<p>In September 2006, Bush was asked during a television interview about the ongoing strife in Iraq. He smiled and replied, \u201cI like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is \u2014 my point is, there\u2019s a strong will for democracy.\u201d To recognize the importance of civilian casualties would have marred his story about the conquest of Iraq as a historical triumph of democracy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Pentagon spent more money bribing Iraqi journalists than counting Iraqi victims. As long as there were enough cheerleaders in Iraq and on the home front, the bodies of U.S. victims did not exist \u2014 at least in the American media.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Pentagon contractors offered strategic advice on how to keep victims off the radar screen.<\/strong> In 2007, the RAND Corporation released \u201cMisfortunes of War: Press and Public Reaction to Civilian Deaths in Wartime,\u201d explaining how to best respond to bombing debacles. The study concluded that \u201cthe belief that the U.S. military is doing everything it can to minimize civilian casualties is the key to public support for U.S. military operations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The RAND report was more concerned about bad PR than dead children. RAND\u2019s experts asserted that \u201cAmericans and the media are concerned about civilian casualties, and pay very close attention to the issue.\u201d This is the charade that provides a democratic sanction for the U.S. government\u2019s foreign killings.<\/p>\n<p>In reality, most Americans are clueless about the foreign toll of their government\u2019s policies. An early 2007 Associated Press poll found that Americans were well-informed about the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. But the same poll found that \u201cthe median estimate for Iraqi deaths was 9,890.\u201d Actual fatalities were at least 15 times higher \u2014 and perhaps 60 times higher.<\/p>\n<p>In December 2005, Bush said that 30,000 people \u201cmore or less\u201d had been killed in Iraq since the 2003 U.S. invasion. In October 2006, a reporter asked him: \u201cDo you stand by your figure, 30,000?\u201d Bush replied, \u201cYou know, I stand by the figure.\u201d The United Nations estimated that 34,000 civilians were killed in 2006 alone. Regardless, Bush \u201cstood by\u201d his estimate from the prior year. This was the Fallujah methodology on amphetamines: It was impermissible to recognize or admit the deaths of any Iraqis who perished in the 10 months after Bush publicly ordained the 30,000 number.<\/p>\n<p>Iraq\u2019s Health Minister estimated in November 2006 that \u201cthere had been 150,000 civilian deaths during the war so far.\u201d The Iraqi Ministry of Health had kept track of morgue records but ceased its tabulation after arm-twisting from U.S. authorities.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It is folly to pay more attention to Pentagon denials than to piles of corpses and flattened villages. The greater the media\u2019s dependency on government, the less credible press reports on official benevolent intentions become<\/strong>. When the official policy routinely results in killing innocent people, it will almost always also be official policy to deceive the American public about the killings. It is naive to expect a government that recklessly slays masses of civilians to honestly investigate itself and announce its guilt to the world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Killing foreigners is no substitute for protecting Americans. Permitting governments to make their victims vanish profoundly corrupts democracy. Self-government is a mirage if Americans are denied information to judge killings committed in their name.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>This article was originally published in the June 2023 edition of<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fff.org\/explore-freedom\/journal\/\">Future of Freedom<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Iraq War Was a Systematic Atrocity by James Bovard Media coverage of the twentieth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War mostly portrayed the war as a blunder. There were systematic war crimes that have largely vanished into the memory hole, but permitting government officials to vaporize their victims paves the way to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[120,3819,3820,349,2580,574,952,137,3818,1381,27,1025,3821,833,285],"class_list":["post-18521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-atrocity","tag-baghdad","tag-collateral-murder","tag-coverup","tag-fallujah","tag-fff","tag-future-of-freedom-foundation","tag-george-w-bush","tag-haditha","tag-iraq-war","tag-lying","tag-pentagon","tag-ricardo-sanchez","tag-washington-post","tag-wikileaks"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Iraq War Was a Systematic Atrocity - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"George W. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism &amp; Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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